


remember (when the world was young)

by TolkienGirl



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bonding, Fellowship of the Ring, Gen, Memories, Post-Battle of Five Armies, why haven't I written more fic for my fave?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 18:18:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10037990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Pestered by the questions of merry young hobbits, Legolas looks back into the long realms of memory, and the roads that brought him here.





	

They are fascinated by you. They glance and whisper in small voices, as though you cannot hear. The Ringbearer knows of elves, as did his uncle—you remember Bilbo well—but the younger halflings, Merry, and Pippin…they had not seen many of the Fair Folk before Rivendell.

And there, they did not dare ask Lord Elrond many questions.

But now you are their companion. You break the same humble bread and crowd around the same fire. They are young, and frightened, and giddily excited. A thousand years ago, you were not so different.

The questions come at last, when they have worked up enough courage.

"Do you remember when the world was young?"

"Younger," you say, and think _Father,_ a crown of berries and leaves, a gaze as remote and bright as starlight, a voice that spoke long and yet told you little of the things you wanted to know.

If you tell them, they will think it an age, now, that you have walked far from your home, though to you, the years pass quickly into shadow. For there is a darkness on the Greenwood still and you cannot go back. You think _Tauriel_ , and you would wish to see her in your mind as she was a century ago, Captain of the Guard, knowing naught of the wider world. You would wish—but it is your gift, the gift of your kin, to remember all as it is, not as you want it to be.

(A gift? Or a curse? Once, you did not question it.)

Your heart is not always heavy. Yours are the trees, the grass, the lithe vines of the forest. Yours is sunshine and frost, blended in measure. Yours is not to grieve, nor to forget.

And so you laugh with them, these gentle wondering hobbit-folk. When the days grow long you sing songs, both merry and pensive, tell tales of splendor and forgotten names, and you are gladdened that their hearts are yet free and unsullied.

(Your heart is unsullied, too, but it is has never been free—you are a keeper of this earth, you and a thousand others of your kind, and though the time now comes to let it go, it will not let _you_ go.)

(You think of your father, with eyes unchanging fixed on a greenwood where the leaves fall again, and again, and again—where there is winter and summer and the renewal of the year, but no end to darkness and no other change.)

"And you, what do you remember of the world?" you ask in return, and they shake their curly heads, huffing at their pipes.

"We know nothing of the world, Master Elf.""

Night falls again. You think of your mother, at the very edges of your memory—a light, a sweet voice, and little more…it is almost, almost too long ago—and you think of your homeland, of the trees you knew and named.

(Nothing of the world.)

(You knew nothing.)

You think of battles, of black blood, black hearts, and what followed—you think of what these companions have known—Aragorn, the wizard, the man of Gondor, and the dwarf—

When this quest ends, they will know. You will know.

And the world will be no younger.


End file.
